Year: 2014

Proudhon Library

From the “Sixty” to the International

March 1, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
  One of the tasks of this phase of the exploration here is to fill in some of the details about the period of transition, during which the anarchist movement began to take on collectivism in the realms of production and property as one of its key principles. Given all of the historical attention given to the First International, that might seem like a fairly simple project, but the truth is that the currents that it is necessary to trace on the mutualist/proudhonist side of things often just appear in the accounts of the International as the opposition to the […]
Contr'un

There and Back Again

February 28, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Kicking free from the mutualist label in March and April of last year was part of an attempt to achieve two fairly specific outcomes: to clarify my own thinking about the core concepts of anarchy and anarchism; and to attempt to confront some methodological questions, particularly some key questions relating to anarchist historiography, which seemed to be eluding me. I can certainly recommend the exercise of jettisoning one’s keywords as at least a potential means of focusing on ideas instead of words—not always such an easy task in our label-centric, more-or-less fundamentalist culture. And I hope that the emerging theory […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin, “Mémoire justificatif” (1874)

February 21, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
“Mémoire justificatif” (July 28-29, 1874, Splügen, Switzerland) Supporting documents that I write principally for my poor Antonia. I beg Emilio to read it first, then to give it to Cafiero to read, who could give it to his wife to read, if he thinks it is a good idea, and only after he has read it and added his observations it he finds it necessary, to give it to Antonia, but to destroy it by common agreement, since it contains political facts that should never leave the circle of our most intimate friends. Emilio knows the beginning of the Baronata. […]
Bakunin Library

The Policy of the International (III & IV) (1869)

February 20, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Policy of the International III L’Égalité, August 21, 1869; If the International at first showed itself indulgent toward the subversive and reactionary ideas, whether in politics and religion, that the workers might have when joining it, it was not through indifference toward these ideas. We cannot tax it with indifference since it detests them and rejects them with all the strength of its being, every reactionary idea being the overturning of the very principle of the Revolution, as we have already demonstrated in our preceding articles. That indulgence, we repeat again, is inspired by a high wisdom. Knowing perfectly […]
Bakunin Library

The Policy of the International (I & II) (1869)

February 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Policy of the International I L’Égalité, August 7, 1869; “We have believed until now, said La Montagne, that political and religious opinions were independent of the profession of member of the International; and, as for us, that is the terrain on which we place ourselves.” We could believe, at first glance, that Mr. Coullery was right. For, in fact, in accepting a new member the International does not ask him whether he is religious or an atheist, whether or not he belongs to any political party. It simply asks him: Are you a worker, or if you are not, […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin, Letter to Proudhon (1848)

February 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Letter to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ___ Köthen, December 12, 1848 Citizen, I do not know if you will remember me; as for me, in my long peregrinations across Germany and in the Slavic countries, I have often thought of you. You are not one of those that one forgets. I don’t know how to express to you the feeling of joy that I felt when I saw you, after the fatal days of June, mount to the podium to defend the interests and rights of those noble and unfortunate workers of Paris, whom all, all except you, had abandoned. The address […]
Bakunin Library

“I believe neither in constitutions, nor in laws” (1848)

February 18, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Max Nettlau pointed to this letter as the first evidence of anarchist leanings in Bakunin’s writings.] [Early August, 1848] To Citizen George Herwegh. Paris. [Rue St. Augustins] 40 9 [r. sur Cirque]# To George My dear friend, since the letter that I have written from Cologne, which I do not know if you have received, I have no longer written a single word. Many things have changed since then, but not our friendship, not the confidence that we have in one another. The thoughts that are essential to us, the aspirations that are essential to us non plus. I am […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin, Second Address to the Second Congress of Peace and Freedom (1868)

February 16, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Addresses to the Second Congress of Peace and Freedom Second Address (2ndsession)September 23, 1868 Gentlemen, I do not want to respond to all the pleasantries that have been hurled at me from the height of this rostrum. I would have too much to do if I wanted to unravel the truth through the mass of confused ideas and contradictory sentiments that have been raised against me. Several orators have employed, in order to combat me, some arguments so far from serious I would well have the right to put their good faith in doubt.–I would not do it, Gentlemen. I […]
Bakunin Library

César De Paepe, “To the Anti-Collectivists” (1868)

February 13, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
  COLLECTIVIST POLEMIC [1] I. — TO THE ANTI-COLLECTIVISTS. [aka THE LEGITIMACY OF THE SOCIALIZATION OF PROPERTY] Thanks to a dialectics put in the service of a method more often metaphysical than scientific (which it is necessary to avoid confusing with the historical and objective method of Karl Marx), Proudhon has discovered in the social world some laws that observation confirms more from day to day; it is, however, incontestable that hypothesis still plays an infinitely more considerable role in the works of that thinker and that often he has concluded a priori or from insufficient observations: witness the conclusions […]
Working Translations

Charles Keller, “A Memory of the ‘Marmite’” (1913)

February 13, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
  A Memory of the “Marmite” ___             My dear Guillaume, You asked me for a few lines about Eugène Varlin, for the Vie Ouvrière. No one is my ready to honor the memory of that noble champion of the International; but in order to speak of him in a way that will interest the readers, I would have had to know him as a close friend. That was not the case with me. My friend Aristide Rey introduced me to him, toward the end of 1869, as a member of the Marmite, the cooperative restaurant that Varlin had just […]